This African Web Series is the ‘Sex & The City’ of Ghana

When you think “Sex & The City” you think cocktails, love lives, and driven women pushing to the top. Now add in some Ankara print and switch continents to Africa and you’ve got the hit web series “An African City.”

Season two of the show premiered on Sunday both on the web and on some local African television networks, billing itself as Africa’s first web show.

The Carrie Bradshaw of the group is New York-raised Ghanaian, Nana Yaa, who after getting degrees from Georgetown and Columbia, decides to move back to Ghana’s capital city of Accra.

“There are 7 billion people in the world,” Yaa, who narrates, says in the series’ opening scenes. “Every once in a while, one of those people find his or her way home. Or, once in a while, home finds them.”

Yaa reconnects with her four friends who also decide to settle down in “the continent” after living abroad for years. Together the group navigates, love, the pursuit of success, and the journey to self-identity.

The masterminds behind “An African City”, writer and creator, Nicole Amarteifo and executive producer, Millie Monyo, modeled the show after their own experiences as ‘returnees’, moving from the United States to Africa as adults.

The show taps into a very real population of millennials who moved to Africa as adults after finishing their education in the US. Some reports even state that as many as 3,000 African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans have taken advantage of Ghana’s open-arms policy for transplants with African heritage in the last few years.

For some like Amarteifo, the transition into a not entirely familiar culture is worthwhile.

“There’s tons of opportunity,” she told Refinery29. “You can see something here, start it there, and have it be the first. Where else can you do that?”

but for others like Monyo, who moved back to the US, the creature comforts of the US and the freedom of American culture are just more appealing.

“You’re in this situation where it’s not comfortable, with those unreliable conveniences, there’s only so many you can deal with,” Monyo told Refinery29. “It kind of got to that point to me, where I felt like, I’m not really sure that this is for me at this time.”

An African city reflects the struggles of women who have grown up in America as they transition into cultural norms of Accra. Gender roles, manners of etiquette, and even dating are all genuinely different in the Ghanaian capital.

In one episode a woman explains her dating struggles, “I got dumped by a guy that expected me to cook three meals a day every single day. I am not a full-time chef. I am a lawyer.”

But even with those struggles many find getting back to their roots to be a worthwhile and rewarding process and the show has touched expats all over the world.

We’re getting emails from people in Korea, Vietnam, [and] the Caribbean who somehow found the series and were like, ‘You’re telling my story,'” Monyo explained.